Sonic Rob: new Space Marine movie has a tarty IG girl
Sonic Rob: her uniform bares her midriff
FyreHaar: what????
FyreHaar: send this so I may be scathing
Sonic Rob: I am so confuse
Sonic Rob: I may be wrong
Sonic Rob: that could be some tan underarmor
FyreHaar: That was tan underarmour
FyreHaar: there was no tart
FyreHaar: she looked hard
FyreHaar: but there is a dude with my haircut
Sonic Rob: LOL
Sonic Rob: emo chaos marine
FyreHaar: oh totally
Author: Sonic Rob
Subspace – The Lost Bladesman
Should you have on your computer, through whatever means, a copy of the 2011 martial-arts film The Lost Bladesman, and should you perchance have attempted to view this Chinese-language film accompanied by the most common English-language subtitles available on the internet, you may have noticed that those subtitles suck. They are just not very comprehensible. From what I understand, this is probably because they were produced by running a Vietnamese-language script of the film through Babelfish, so that probably gives you an idea of what I’m talking about; there’s a lot of “Do not want!”-style dialog.
Having somewhat enjoyed the film in spite of its issues, I decided to take a few hours and copy-edit the subtitles into something a little more put-together. Admittedly, there were a lot of rough spots; some of the idioms I think just don’t translate well into compact English. I’m not sure if it’s how Chinese works or if the film is badly-written (or, again, if the translation is lousy), but some of the conversations veer wildly through numerous topics with no real transition between sentences. I did what I could to make things clear, readable, and fun. In maybe one or two lines, this entailed a total rewrite, which I find sort of tacky and embarrassing, but I think the effect is worthwhile.
Also, there are several instances of written Chinese that had no subtitle translation; as I can’t read Chinese (nor, in the interest of full disclosure, do I speak Mandarin or Cantonese), these written segments remain untranslated.
So, going back to your hypothetical non-pirated copy of The Lost Bladesman, I here present a set of modified subtitles that might be a bit more esthetically pleasing to English-language viewers, in .txt format. To use them, download the file and edit its extenstion from .txt to .srt; wordpress won’t let me upload .srt files for security reasons.
If you have a roughly-translated set of English-language subtitles, and you’re looking for someone to punch them up and clean up their spelling/grammar/coherence, feel free to get in touch with me. I offer reasonably fast turnaround and competitive rates.
Actually, I have no idea what would constitute either. Watch the film; Guan Yu kicks like 400 guys’ asses with a halberd, punches a guy right in the helmet, and takes on an entire army with a single rock in his hand.
-ssr
Trailer Trash: Three Musketeers
FyreHaar: oh god, did you see the three musketeers trailer?
Sonic Rob: a while ago I saw one
FyreHaar: see the new one
FyreHaar: don’t be drinking anything
FyreHaar: I am all for putting a fresh spin on classic tales
FyreHaar: but this is just whack
Sonic Rob: orly?
FyreHaar: two words, straight from the pit of hell
FyreHaar: steam
FyreHaar: punk
Sonic Rob: oh dear =(
Continue reading Trailer Trash: Three Musketeers
Megachat: Tomb Raider Marketing
Sonic Rob: god dammit
Sonic Rob: I just blew my nose so hard I farted
FyreHaar: damn
Sonic Rob: I am so skeeved out by this new Tomb Raider game
FyreHaar: por qua?
Sonic Rob: well, they say they want to give us a younger, vulnerable Lara Croft
Sonic Rob: so instead of a confident woman with huge tits being awesome
Sonic Rob: you have a scared woman with huge tits being wounded and chased around
Sonic Rob: they’ve disempowered her
Sonic Rob: it’s the beating her up that makes me feel worst
FyreHaar: this should be the story of her empowerment
FyreHaar: how she got tough
Sonic Rob: I don’t know what the game is like as a whole, but all of the preview coverage mentions her getting impaled, gutted, dropped off of high places
FyreHaar: gah!
Sonic Rob: see, you can look at it either way
Sonic Rob: is it about the journey to empowerment?
Sonic Rob: or about the status of fear and pain?
Sonic Rob: we know who she’ll become
Sonic Rob: so seeing her like this is like seeing her tied up
Sonic Rob: and cut
Sonic Rob: I’ve said it before: the preview coverage makes the game look like violent, degrading pornography without the sex
Sonic Rob: just the power over and degradation of an independent woman
FyreHaar: damnit
FyreHaar: this often happens with female empowerment story lines
FyreHaar: it’s like sucker punch
FyreHaar: it’s purportedly about how this woman will come to her strength
FyreHaar: but it’s really all about watching the degradation that requires her to become strong to survive.
Sonic Rob: sucker punch was about all you have is your ass
Continue reading Megachat: Tomb Raider Marketing
Chat Box
Sonic Rob: http://www.shacknews.com/article/68921/dawn-war-3-combines-dow1
FyreHaar: “Now Dawn of War III, either way, is going to have a much larger strategic component to it, more of a global battle going on with little tactical things, sort of MMO-like.”
FyreHaar: how do we feel about this statement?
FyreHaar: that is very DOWI actually
Sonic Rob: sounds like Dark Crusade to me
FyreHaar: indeed
FyreHaar: I liked in DOWI that the planet was going to shit
FyreHaar: you just had very discreet goals within the larger conflict
Sonic Rob: well, maybe they will do a thing in DoW 3 where the results of your games affect the flow of everyone on the server
Sonic Rob: kinda like in the Warhammer MMO
FyreHaar: oohhh
Sonic Rob: world PVP in an RTS
FyreHaar: whoa
Sonic Rob: but honestly, I’d wager they don’t have a line of code yet
Sonic Rob: there are many routes they could take
Continue reading Chat Box
What Does “Genre” Mean in Reference to Games?
In regard to this video from Extra Credits:
If someone asked you what “genre” of game Dawn of War is, what would you say? Would you call it a “Sci-fi game”? Or an “RTS”, or possibly a “strategy game”? The problematic disconnect here is that in non-participatory forms of entertainment, the metadata you have about the thing really just boil down to descriptions of the story’s structure, tropes, setting, and style. That’s where we get genre from.
In games you have often had only some or none of those traditional categories, so the data we’ve based “genre” upon have been information about how the game is played, whether in regard to perspective (FPS, third person), the sequence of play (turn-based, real-time), the type of thinking involved (strategy, tactical), the type of action that occurs (shooting, brawling, sports), and probably a dozen other axes of evaluation.
This is fine for Tetris, but has always made genre sort of a problem for games that have both stories and mechanics to describe under the rubric of “genre”, as illustrated in the example above. Admittedly, this isn’t a huge limitation in describing games over the last 25 years, since 95% of them have had stories that obviously fit into the sci-fi, action, or fantasy molds. But I have to wonder: if we had a better language than “genre” to encapsulate games, would it be easier to make high-profile games that embrace story idioms other than the big three? I’ve been enjoying LA Noire a great deal in spite of its dreadful shooting and driving, impossible interview mechanics, and psychopathically unlikable player character just because there’s no dragons and no spaceships in the story. There’s nothing inherently wrong with elves or space marines, but just to have a big-budget story without either is fantastically refreshing.
-ssr
Chat Box
FyreHaar: I think every person should be issued a copy of the first silverchair album on their 14th birthday
Sonic Rob: That was your personal soundtrack for a summer, wasn’t it?
Sonic Rob: while you were working in a library or something?
FyreHaar: OPS music department
FyreHaar: with Superunknown
FyreHaar: both of which I borrowed from you
Sonic Rob: oh man, Superunknown was a great one too
Sonic Rob: but that’s more for when you’re 16
FyreHaar: I was
FyreHaar: Like albums I’m going to surreptitiously load onto my child’s mp3 player
FyreHaar: so it’ll shuffle through them
FyreHaar: and then they’ll be like, what is this!!
Sonic Rob: you can play those albums up against your womb, and then later on when your kid hears them they’ll find them strangely comforting and familiar…
FyreHaar: ha!!
FyreHaar: totally
Sonic Rob: or they’ll be born deaf
FyreHaar: eep!
Chat Box
Sonic Rob: http://www.joystickdivision.com/2011/05/gamers_love_to_right_and_it_ma.php
Sonic Rob: guy complains about nerds tearing apart the “Space Marine looks like Gears” guy
Sonic Rob: nerds promptly tear the new guy apart as well
FyreHaar: dude, seriously
FyreHaar: take your beating and go home
FyreHaar: gamers don’t love to be right
FyreHaar: they love to prove you wrong
Sonic Rob: ha
FyreHaar: and especially when you are so demonstrably incorrect
FyreHaar: you are gonna get jumped on
Sonic Rob: I really think it’s somehow related to console wars
Sonic Rob: people get really invested in things
FyreHaar: “This sad affair says more about gamers than it does about Dean Takahashi’s journalistic chops.”
FyreHaar: really?
FyreHaar: That he has none
FyreHaar: or that he decided to be lazy and got fucked for it?
Continue reading Chat Box
Chat Box: Special Guest Chat
Sig Fem Seks: So when are you getting LA Noire?
Sonic Rob: $40
Sonic Rob: or the GOTY edition
Sonic Rob: I want the one that has all these extra cases
Sig Fem Seks: That’s a shame
Sig Fem Seks: You could be playing it right now
Sig Fem Seks: and enjoying it
Sonic Rob: I have heard lots of good things
Sonic Rob: seems like a good time to buy Red Dead Redemption ;P
Sig Fem Seks: You still haven’t played that, have you?
Sonic Rob: neeeope
Sonic Rob: I am always about a year behind
Sig Fem Seks: You are a fucking criminal
Sonic Rob: I am immune to hype
Sig Fem Seks: You love missing out on fun!
Sig Fem Seks: You are not immune to that!
Sonic Rob: It is the modern equivalent of mortification of the flesh
Sonic Rob: It brings me closer to 8-Bit God
Sig Fem Seks: You know what brings me closer to 8-Bit God? A HEMI!
Sig Fem Seks: I… what
Sonic Rob: uh
Continue reading Chat Box: Special Guest Chat
Schmannonball Schmead: Soul Drinkers Omnibus
Mildly spoilery in the service of outrage.
It’s often been noted that while Warhammer 40,000’s Imperial Space Marines are fun as plastic army men who beat up orks with their chainsaw swords, they make for terribly dull long-form fiction characters. There are only so many cries of “For the Emperor!” and “Xenos filth!” that a reader can take before boredom sets in, and a marine-centric novel runs the risk of becoming a string of heroic deaths and gruesome slaughters.
It’s very obvious that Ben Counter doesn’t really like Space Marines much, or at least understands the arguments of those who don’t. The Soul Drinkers in his novels have all of the usual Space Marine “virtues” – pride, wrath, pitilessness, overweening piety toward the Emperor – but Counter makes a point of giving the perspective of both the enemies and allies of the Marines, and none of them fail to see these flaws for what they are. Nobody in the Imperium of Man really trusts or respects the Soul Drinkers outside of their use as a tool to smash enemies, and in the omnibus’ third book we find that the Crimson Fists marines are held in similar poor regard by the Imperial Guard generals they are assisting.
The first novel is set up as a Greek tragedy; the names of Soul Drinkers like Sarpedon, Iktinos, and Tellos are no accident. Small mistake by small mistake, prodded by hubris, they slowly make their way down the path of damnation. The other two books are more like action mystery novels, with the reader shut out of the Soul Drinkers’ motivations and getting more from the side of those who oppose them. All of the books have an ongoing sense of doom and decay, as the fugitive marines are steadily whittled down with little hope of… well, anything, really.
Continue reading Schmannonball Schmead: Soul Drinkers Omnibus